The Younger Set eBook

His head sank; he fixed his narrowing eyes on the
floor and held them there, silent, unmoved, while
within the tempests of terror, temptation, and doubt
assailed him, dragging at the soul of him, where it
clung blindly to its anchorage. And it held fast—­raging,
despairing in the bitterness of renunciation, but
still held on through the most dreadful tempest that
ever swept him. Courage, duty, reparation—­the
words drummed in his brain, stupefying him with their
dull clamour; but he understood and listened, knowing
the end—­knowing that the end must always
be the same for him. It was the revolt of instinct
against drilled and ingrained training, inherited
and re-schooled—­the insurgent clamour of
desire opposed to that stern self-repression characteristic
of generations of Selwyns, who had held duty important
enough to follow, even when their bodies died in its
wake.

And it were easier for him, perhaps, if his body died.

He rose and walked to the window. Over the Bay
of Shoals the fog was lifting; and he saw the long
gray pier jutting northward—­the pier where
the troopships landed their dead and dying when the
Spanish war was ended.

And he looked at the hill where the field hospital
had once been. His brother died there—­in
the wake of that same duty which no Selwyn could ignore.

After a moment he turned to Gerald, a smile on his
colourless face:

“It will be all right, my boy. You are
not to worry—­do you understand me?
Go to bed, now; you need the sleep. Go to bed,
I tell you—­I’ll stand by you.
You must begin all over again, Gerald—­and
so must I; and so must I.”

CHAPTER X

LEX NON SCRIPTA

Selwyn had gone to New York with Gerald, “for
a few days,” as he expressed it; but it was
now the first week in October, and he had not yet
returned to Silverside.

A brief note to Nina thanking her for having had him
at Silverside, and speaking vaguely of some business
matters which might detain him indefinitely—­a
briefer note to Eileen regretting his inability to
return for the present—­were all the communication
they had from him except news brought by Austin, who
came down from town every Friday.

A long letter to him from Nina still remained unanswered;
Austin had seen him only once in town; Lansing, now
back in New York, wrote a postscript in a letter to
Drina, asking for Selwyn’s new address—­the
first intimation anybody had that he had given up his
lodgings on Lexington Avenue.

“I was perfectly astonished to find he had gone,
leaving no address,” wrote Boots; “and
nobody knows anything about him at his clubs.
I have an idea that he may have gone to Washington
to see about the Chaosite affair; but if you have
any address except his clubs, please send it to me.”

Eileen had not written him; his sudden leave-taking
nearly a month ago had so astounded her that she could
not believe he meant to be gone more than a day or
two. Then came his note, written at the Patroons’
Club—­very brief, curiously stilted and formal,
with a strange tone of finality through it, as though
he were taking perfunctory leave of people who had
come temporarily into his life, and as though the chances
were agreeably even of his ever seeing them again.